


Justice

by greendragon_templar



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: 1880s, Australia witnesses an execution, Bushrangers, Character Study, Gen, Hanging, He's disappointed but not surprised, Historical Hetalia, Nationverse, based on the execution of Thomas Rogan and Captain Moonlight in 1880
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 10:35:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16283006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greendragon_templar/pseuds/greendragon_templar
Summary: Australia makes the wrong choice.





	Justice

**Author's Note:**

> This is very self-indulgent to be quite honest but it's also a chance to explore briefly how I see Australia's relations to bushrangers in the mid to late 19th Century. I think that this might have been a bit of a turning point for him - his population's growing, he's got people to take care of, so I don't think he was always super keen on bushrangers even if they intrigued him (and I mean, despite their personal circumstances in some cases, many of them were bad people). But I think his perspective changes a bit after this and perhaps he engages more with what's happening to the Kellys (as some of the last bushrangers) and indeed I think this absolutely clarified his perspective on capital punishment. I think he could've tolerated it before this point, but still removed himself from it because he found it so grotesque. Daring himself to see an execution so up close, thinking he agreed with it, determined his feelings once and for all.

At first, Australia’s almost convinced the bushrangers _deserve_ to hang.

It’s always been easiest, of course, to observe from afar, to take stock of the situation from a distance and to discern fact from fiction as best he can (although the press doesn’t make his job simple, and he’s sieved through more conflicting accounts than he can recall). Each has captured his attention; that much is beyond rebuttal. But not all are as good as the next. England’s always been of the mind that there are crimes which forfeit the right to exist, and thus far, his conclusions have seemed reasonable. They’ve been reflected in the ends of gang rapists, of triple-offending convicts, of attempted murderers, and of bushrangers. The bushrangers attract the ire and the attention of thousands and, Australia’s frequently felt himself being swept up in the frenzy. Only eighteen, physically, and he’s seen more than anyone else might _dream_. He was there at the beginning, and he’s certain that he’ll be there at the end.

Yet he’s avoided the executions, wherever possible, consciously and subconsciously. He’s seen (and heard) enough to last a lifetime, seen floggings and beatings and shootings. _His_ people have never been as cruel as England's people; he's seen the sense in many customary punishments, spearing or payback or otherwise. The other personifications, those of the native communities that he's spoken to recently (when they've wanted to speak to him) have shared his hatred. A macabre list of state-sanctioned acts ten miles long, and Australia knows he could tick off on most of it. There have been times when he’d just as easily give his own life as allow Point Puer or Pentridge to continue receiving and spitting out society’s dregs, but he knows, he _knows_ , that justice cannot always be wrong. Indeed, there are more occasions than not where it is sorely lacking. Frontier massacres never draw the public vilification and outrage that they warrant. Not every drop of blood is valued the same. 

He cannot love them, besides; he cannot love the bushrangers, irrespective of his outbursts when he was younger, utter revulsion piled on top of manufactured indifference. He cannot love them, although he’ll admit he’s tracked their movements, and held his breath at every accusation false and true. Once, he fancied the notion he’d inherited the highwayman. At times he’s attended the committals and trials, even waited for the verdicts, viewed the death masks of the criminals and pondered the words of phrenologists. A disposition to crime – can that even exist?

At the same time, however, he’s sneered along with the papers and stressed away hours upon hours of needed rest. Gold’s running out, and Melbourne and Sydney both are in a far worse state than he wishes he could say. Every road, every farm, every gully from shore to shore, is choked with unemployed, itinerant wanderers, thicker than the plagues, and his attention is rightfully directed to the economic downturn, to the impacts that he feels _personally_. The injustices mount, his people die in droves, and he no longer knows who to blame.

So don’t they _deserve_ to hang, then? Don’t the inconvenient and the selfish, those terrorising the countryside and inspiring headlines, _merit_ his distaste? Haven’t they made life hell for the undeserving?

(It’s better not to think about botched trials and altered evidence, police harassment and the desperate need for prison reform. Crime is crime, after all.)

Australia tips his head back to see the gallows. Darlinghurst’s offered both private and public viewings in the past and he considers himself fortunate to have earned such proximity to the condemned, within the prison walls. He’s persuaded himself that he _ought_ to be here, that for once in his life, he needs to see what comes of such behaviour. He cannot be sated with newspaper accounts; isn’t there a reason that people attend? Isn’t there a reason why people have gathered at the entrance to Darlinghurst since dawn?

People unwittingly part for him and he passes between them like a river between its banks: a far cry from the complete dismissals he’s received in the past, the outcries of disconcerted dinner guests and laughter of military officers. Decades later and it’s no surprise that with his brown skin, that with his utter disregard for those he’s deemed below his consideration and undeserving of his – _Australia’s_ – attention, New South Wales’ elite are all too ready to look at him the wrong way, but his invisible influence silences them where the misery of the space cannot.

When no one is around, he imagines it’d be hard to understand the true intent of the place in which he now stands – only the suspended platform and the trapdoors continue to convey that this is where so many have breathed their last. In the atmosphere of the present, there can be no mistake.

The murmurs of the two clergymen on the platform, one Protestant, the other Catholic, are magnified in the quiet. He watches the shuffling around of the hangman and his assistant, the gratuitous movements of the hangman and his adjustments to the nooses, working to ensure comfort - for what it’s worth. For half a second, Australia could swear their eyes meet (or rather, one eye – the other’s been sewn over).

Everyone catches only a _glimpse_ of the faces of the condemned, one perhaps a decade older than the other. For the first time since his arrival, and insistence on his own resolve, Australia feels his stomach clench; he takes two steps back. The actual physical  _youth_ of the man on the left has been muttered a million times by the reporters, and he’s seen it written down in petitions for the man’s life, but when he’s assumed that knowing about the charge of murder was enough to be satisfied, there’s room left over to be _stunned_.

He feels suddenly, deathly cold, and he cannot look at the hooded faces above, or listen just too closely to the ragged breathing that trickles through. He presses a hand to the back of his neck, starting to throb. Then Australia tucks his chin to his breast and stares at the lines of his hands, and thinks of himself, fifty years earlier, rejecting the damnation of a wayward convict. In his last letter to the Premier, penned out of curiosity, he was told that this was merely the inevitable consequence of the shootout two months ago, that this colony’s bushranging days are well and truly behind, that additional errors on the record cannot be abided. It’s twenty years now until the new century, and to be repeatedly crippled by the arrival of each new gang of scoundrels can only generate derision. 

 _This was a sad mistake_ , rushes through his mind. Nobody made him come here, he elected to. He chose this. Has his disgust with hangings convinced him of his own cowardice? Why did he come, and why is he doubting it? Does he doubt their culpability? A poorly orchestrated hanging quickly becomes _sadistic;_ he knows perfectly well that he doesn't truly have the stomach for it.

All along he has swung between two points: admiration and anger, the former out of spite and the latter out of frustration with the disorder it’s created. He can’t excuse murder for the sake of saying he supported the endeavours of Gardiner and Vane and Hall and Gilbert, although he has _enjoyed_ their exploits, in his own detached way.

The men over his head have been charged with _murder,_ but he’s not so stupid as to believe the trials in this colony are consistently fair, or that the justices will be impartial when faced with the chance for an expedient end. He cannot trust it; he cannot—

The spring of the trapdoors and the creak and _snap_ of the rope drawing short shatters the sanctity of his thoughts.

Seemingly stuck in place, looking on with intense, morbid fascination, he realises the spectacle is about as vivid a reminder of his helplessness as he’ll get.

He cannot recall any of the reasons why he came here. One of the men is dead, but the other is _writhing_. The hangman’s ministrations have been for nothing. His neck’s intact. Australia’s heard it said that once a person drops they lose all feeling, but as he looks, he _swears_ that cannot be the case.

The condemned man, with his arms pinioned, is at the whim of his _blindness_ , his uncertainty as to the fate of his companion, his agony, and his knowledge that he’s _in_ his death throes. He cannot even use his tongue to make his case, and Australia has little choice but to watch as his final breath is drained away.

All the reservations Australia pushed to the back of his mind resurface, and he wants to be sick there and then. They suspend the bodies for fifteen minutes after the second man has perished, and Australia’s gone by the time they cut them down, tasting bile. He cannot even control the trembling of his hands.

At first, he was convinced that they _deserved_ to hang.

But of course, he never wanted the consequences.


End file.
